


Everything I've Buried, I Feel It On My Skin.

by Dash_El, LittleRedRuby



Series: Rich AU [3]
Category: DC Extended Universe, Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, and so am i, i love my girl so much, things are happening and sam is SAD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23962081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dash_El/pseuds/Dash_El, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRedRuby/pseuds/LittleRedRuby
Summary: Things get much worse after The MET.
Relationships: Samantha "Sam" Arias/Andrea Rojas
Series: Rich AU [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1715413
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43





	Everything I've Buried, I Feel It On My Skin.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so happy to see you all's responses to this AU. So, here, enjoy!

Things get much worse after The MET. 

Her mom is working more hours than usual. She leaves in the early afternoon to supervise the administrative side of the restaurant and doesn't get home until well past midnight. The boost from the Gala keeps the restaurant full until after closing hours, and the sous chef has no other choice but to call her to help out in the kitchen too. 

Sam is glad. The restaurant by no means was struggling, but seeing her mother this happy is always nice.

Her mother’s restaurants deliver a premium experience with a homey feel to it. They are definitely high end, but never feel too stuffy or pretentious. She loves taking the girls there from time to time, especially when her mother is in the kitchen. 

And with her mother being so busy this week, Sam sees it as a blessing and a curse at the same time. She has enough space to experiment with her abilities, and it also gives her enough time to fix any messes she makes when things get... out of hand.

The Tuesday after the MET, she gets a serious headache that doesn’t let her leave her bed all day. For a second she thinks she is hallucinating when the voices start. It feels like she is in the middle of a huge crowd at a concert, with music blasting all around her and conversations she can’t even understand are being shouted in her ear.

It is overwhelming. She can hear everything: from the conversations across the street, to gunshots on hidden corners of the city. People screaming and crying out for help. All of these voices inside her head are begging for salvation and Sam cannot give it to them.

Her body keeps trembling and shaking. She vaguely hears her phone ringing, but it’s drowned out by all the new noise. The bursts of strength come in full force. She grabs the phone on the nightstand and completely destroys the screen, the glass cracked to dust with just a touch of her fingertips. 

It is maddening and exhausting. She manages to achieve a few quiet moments by focusing on the sounds that surrounded her. When the trembling stops after a few hours, Sam moves slowly and carefully. Delicately grabbing her laptop, she orders noise cancelling headphones and a new phone, both set to arrive by the next day.

Her mother frets over her, finding her sweaty and still in bed when she wakes up. When she comes home, Sam is still passed out and showing no signs that she had left the bed. She kisses her on the forehead, and Sam remains so still that she barely breathes while her mother was in the room. 

She is afraid. Afraid of hurting her or making a move that will send her mother flying across the room. She doesn’t even want her mother touching her, but cannot find it in her heart to push her away.

“We need to take you to the hospital,” her mother says. Sam shakes her head. 

“It’s just the flu mamá, I’m fine,” she said, her words sound strained and shaky. Her mother doesn’t believe a word of it. She stays in Sam’s room that night, watching over her and trying to feed her a broth she has prepared earlier.

When morning comes, and Sam wakes up first, her body aches all over. It hurt to bend her knees and elbows, but the trembling had stopped. The voices remain, but subdued, and Sam quickly realizes that focusing on what surrounds her is a good strategy to keep herself from going insane.

She taps her mother lightly on the shoulder when she sees her lying next to her, the bags under her eyes pretty evident after a full night of work and watching over Sam. 

She wakes up with a start, and Sam is afraid she has hurt her somehow. But when she looks at Sam, wide awake and sitting on the bed, she moves towards her and throws her arms around her neck, hugging her tightly.

“Mi niña, how are you feeling?” she asks. Sam’s eyes water, her arms hovering over her mother’s back, trying not to touch her. She buries her face in her mother’s neck, her scent and proximity giving her comfort.

“I’m better,” Sam responds.

“I’m not working today. I paid my workers to take care of the restaurant,” she says, and Sam shakes her head.

“I’m feeling much better now mamá, go work, I’ll be fine.” She fakes some bravado to convince her. Her mother gives her a pointed look, cupping Sam’s face and gazing into her eyes. 

“You know, whatever is going on, you can tell me,” she finally says after a few moments of silence, and Sam nods, looking down. The tears she has been holding in fall onto her lap. Her mother brushes them away, bringing Sam closer to kiss her on the forehead.

After a while, Sam takes a deep breath and looks at her mother once again. “I’m fine,” she says reassuringly. 

Her mother nods. “Come on, we gotta prepare breakfast,” she says and walks out of the room. 

And they do, Sam passing her all the ingredients while her mother cooks and chatters away about last night. About how everyone wanted to talk to her about the MET. How lively the atmosphere was. The sheer number of people who wanted to sneak a peek at the kitchen.

She feels like she is six again, and laughs at each of the funny stories her mother tells, eagerly waiting for breakfast to be served.

When her mother leaves at two in the afternoon, Sam stops wallowing in her misery, and begins training. Or, at least, what she thinks passes up as training. Might as well start controlling this thing instead of just letting it kill her.

She starts by moving furniture, clearing some space in the living room. When she goes to push the sofa, it skids and stops with a loud bang on the opposite wall. The wall remains unharmed, but Sam makes a mental note to be more careful. 

Sam picks up the coffee table, noticing that she can do it with one hand and without breaking a sweat. Before, the super strength came and went. She would have small episodes that would last about an hour or two. Now it is constant, the shakes forcing this new ability to settle in her body.

Sam moves most of the furniture successfully, being more careful now. She clears enough space to try the hovering.

Bending her knees slightly, she takes a small jump, and immediately lands on the ground once again. The floorboards creak beneath her feet, the carpet muffling the sound, but the wood doesn’t crack.

She jumps again, and hovers for a few seconds before she falls down on her ass. It hurts more than it should, and when she raises herself, she notices that there is a small hole where her elbow landed, underneath the rug.

Fuck.

She tries again and falls a few more times, but besides the first hole she made with her elbow, the floor is safe for now. 

She is interrupted when the delivery man arrives. Sam decides to take a break, her body soaked in sweat and her head spinning thanks to the voices, which have become louder once again.

She opens the package like a mad woman, not even bothering to search for scissors. The boxes nearly disintegrate in her hands due to her new strength.

She sets up the phone and grabs the headphones, putting them on.

The voices quiet down, but don't go away. Sam sighs, finding a little reprieve in the calm that washes over her. 

When the phone is finally set up, she receives hundreds of notifications, half of them from Andrea. She has voicemails and voice notes she hasn’t listened to since Monday evening. She hears the worry in her voice, and Sam doesn’t know what to do. 

Her phone rings, and it’s Andrea. Taking a deep breath, she takes the call.

“Hey!” she says, and Sam's eyes water again. 

She's tired, her body aching and her mind is exhausted. She wants to tell Andrea and Lena so badly, but she wants to understand herself first. She wants to have all the answers when the both of them ask her about what has been going on in her life. 

She is scared of hurting them too. She can't risk it. 

"Hey," she says after clearing her throat. "What's up?" 

"What's up? That's all you have to say?" Andrea scoffs, and Sam can hear the way she rolls her eyes. She can hear the rise and fall of her chest every time she breathes. 

She is getting a headache once again, and brings her hand to her face, rubbing her forehead. 

"I've been busy," Sam says. 

"With what?" Andrea sounds annoyed now. An annoyed Andrea is dangerous. She wants to hang up. 

"College stuff. Look, Andrea, I gotta go. Talk to you later."

Sam feels like an asshole when she ends the call, covering her eyes with her hands. 

Andrea calls again, and Sam lets it ring, staring at the picture she took of them when they were in Ibiza last year. Andrea drinks a cocktail, biting the straw, while Sam has her arm around her neck and her eyes are almost closed because of how big her smile is. 

She misses her. 

But she puts the phone on airplane mode and gets back to work. 

*

It becomes a routine. She wakes up with her mother sleeping next to her, they prepare breakfast and Sam breaks the glasses or plates. She tries to pass it up as accidents, pretending to drop them on the ground, when, in fact, they shatter in her hands. 

When her mother leaves, she moves the furniture once again, carefully and paying attention to how her body behaves. The strain in her muscles or, more rather, the lack of it. Everything feels lighter now. Objects that were impossible to pick up before, Sam can hold in her hands as if they were as light as paper.

It would be awesome if it wasn't so scary. 

The levitating is a whole other issue. 

She doesn't break the floor again, but staying in the air is complicated and tiresome. Her muscles tighten up to keep herself upright. 

Sweat drips from her brow, her teeth grinding as her abdomen pulls taut. She starts by holding on to a chair, her feet off the ground, and her hands anchoring her to the back of it. 

The first time she lets go, she stays horizontal in the air for five seconds before she comes crashing down and destroys the chair beneath her. 

But she continues to practice, testing out certain limits, never trying the abilities outside the house for fear of being seen. 

By the time Friday comes around, she can hover without losing control of her balance for up ten minutes, her feet dangling in the air and her hands extended without holding onto the walls or any piece of furniture.

But she quickly realizes that she can’t do this alone. Her body is screaming at her every time the day ends. Her mother is starting to ask questions about her exhaustion. About the broken chair and the hole on the wall she tried to cover up with one of her stored paintings. She also keeps pushing Sam to see a doctor. The lack of proper rest makes Sam irritable, the headaches only getting worse. And, for as much she meditates with the headphones on, the voices still sneak in when she least expects it. 

So she starts tracking down the hero. 

When the idea first enters her mind, she dismisses it quickly. For all she knows, the hero could be just an internet prank. A well organized internet prank that has reached the local news with enough witnesses telling stories of their close encounter with the hero. 

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a prank. But during afternoons when she isn’t trying to control the hovering or the strength, she focuses her ears on the clicking of the keyboard and the sound the mouse makes when she moves it. The clicks soothe her and help her to tune out the soccer game her neighbor from three houses down is watching. 

She ends up on Reddit, reading a whole thread dedicated to this mysterious figure and people’s encounters with whoever they were.

No one, so far, has gotten a good look at them. All the posted footage is blurry at best, and fabricated at worst. There is always one idiot who posts fake stories and quickly gets called out by everyone else. 

But what gets her attention is that the most recent stories posted are all based in New York City. Sam begins to assume that the Hero spends most of their time here. 

Grabbing her keys and throwing her phone and wallet into a backpack, Sam steps outside for the first time since Monday. 

She doesn’t have a clear plan set out, so she begins walking instead, trying out her legs, and getting comfortable with each new step she takes. Sam has become acutely aware of how her center of gravity has shifted and changed. She feels lighter but, at the same time, more steady, like she has been waiting her whole life for this moment. Like she’s been chasing this new way of existing for a while and has finally found it.

Sam doesn’t know where her feet are taking her, but she continues to walk, focusing her hearing on the soft sound her steps make. She tunes out the noise with the help of the headphones, which have been a life saver during these past few days. 

She feels her phone vibrate incessantly in her backpack and she doesn't need super senses to know it’s Andrea.

Sam hates that she’s been ignoring her, but doesn’t know what else to do. She can’t risk seeing either Andrea or Lena before she knows exactly what’s going on with her. 

She can hurt them, or worse, they can reject Sam for what she has become. 

After about an hour of walking, she finally looks up and finds herself outside of a police station. 

Fitting, she thinks, while an idea starts to form in her head. Fiddling with the straps of her backpack, she tries to find a place to sit down for the night. 

She locates an alley right across the station, but the fire escape ladder of one of the buildings isn’t down. She looks around. The last of the sunlight has fallen and she has enough cover to get away with it.

Sam takes a deep breath, looks around once again, and lets herself go.

Her feet come off of the ground. Slowly, but surely, she approaches the first landing of the fire escape, realizing that this is the highest she’s ever been. After six feet or so in the air, she grabs the railing and pushes herself over, her feet landing softly on the metal.

She laughs, exhilarated from what she just accomplished. For the first time since the MET, she thinks this isn’t a curse. 

She stays until midnight in front of the police station, her ears picking up everything happening inside, she doesn’t understand much of the codes being thrown around but the word hero or vigilante isn’t uttered, so Sam assumes they didn’t show up this night.

So she walks home, arriving only half an hour before her mother does. 

She sees Sam sitting in the living room watching an old telenovela she randomly found while channel surfing, a bowl of popcorn resting next to her. Her mother throws her purse on the sofa and walks to Sam, hugging her fiercely.

"How are you feeling now?" she asks, and Sam just nods, offering the bowl of popcorn to her. 

They stay up until three or so, laughing at the absurdity of what's happening on screen. 

For the first time in a while, she doesn't hear voices.

*

The next day, her mother leaves around two in the afternoon. Sam makes sure to at least spend the morning together, calming down her mother’s worries and making up an excuse of being tired with college essays and assignments.

She gives her a pointed look. Sam knows it means that she doesn’t believe a word of it, but her mother let’s it go anyway. 

After she leaves, Sam gets ready to go out again. When she is about to open the door, the doorbell rings. Confused and thinking her mom must have forgotten something, she opens it. 

And sees Andrea standing in front of her. 

Shit.

“Well, at least you aren’t dead,” she says, and Sam can see it in her eyes how upset she actually is. There is fury in them, questions that Sam doesn’t know how to answer just yet. She feels how her hands start trembling again, with a new burning pressure behind her eyes. 

The world seems to expand in Sam’s ears, the headphones resting on her neck and not her ears. She hears people walking on the street, sirens blasting kilometers away. And the birds, she can hear so many birds in Central Park.

She brings her hand to her face, focusing on Andrea in front of her. 

“What are you doing here?” she says, voice strained, getting familiar with the breaths Andrea takes, the sound of her blood rushing inside her veins, her pulse grounding her. 

“Well, considering the fact that you didn’t pick up your phone I thought to myself ‘maybe she is dead in a ditch and neither Lena nor me know anything about it’,” she responds, walking past Sam and going inside the house.

Andrea walks towards the living room and sits herself on the sofa, right in the middle, her hands extending over the back of it. Sam takes in the soft line of her neck, the see through fabric of her blouse giving her a good look at the black ink that covers a good portion of her skin. But her eyes have become even clearer since Monday, and she can see the subtle red lines covering her back.

She must have been with Lena this morning. Sam bites her cheek. 

“So” she says, “what’s up with you?” She motions with her head to make Sam sit on the coffee table, but Sam stays standing, hands in her pockets. The burning subsides, but doesn’t go away completely. 

She doesn’t want to get too close, something new is happening, and Andrea needs to go. 

“I don’t have time for this,” she says, extending a hand to show Andrea the door. 

“You are not getting rid of me that easily,” she replies, standing up when she realizes that Sam isn’t sitting down. She starts walking slowly towards her, and Sam takes a step back in response.

Andrea freezes, and Sam feels her heart constrict. 

“What? Are you sleeping with someone? That’s why you need to go in such a hurry?” She says it sarcastically, laughing in that way of hers. The way that makes you wonder if she is laughing with or at you. 

Sam feels one of her feet starting to leave the ground, and she stomps down to keep it still. Sweat gathers on the back of her neck and blinking is becoming painful.

“Just because you use sex to deal with your problems doesn’t mean that the rest of us do it too, Andrea,” she says, teeth grinding out every word. She moves her head, motioning to the marks she could clearly see on Andrea’s back. 

Sam knows it’s a low blow, and by the way Andrea’s eyes widen, she knows she hit a mark she isn’t sure she was trying to find. But Andrea needs to leave right now, because Sam isn’t sure how her body will respond.

She hears Andrea swallow with difficulty, the rise and fall of her chest getting more rapid with every second that passes. 

“Screw you, Sam,” Andrea finally says, and Sam has seen that cold look directed at other people before, but never at her. She’s seen it thrown at Andrea’s father every time he dismisses how good his daughter is at fencing, trying to train her to take over the company some day. Or at the people of high society who look down at Sam and her mother because of their humble past. 

It’s heartbreaking.

Andrea shoves past her, and Sam sees her flinch, grabbing her shoulder and clenching her jaw. She reaches the door and doesn’t even look back when she slams it shut.

Sam hurt her in more ways than one.

*

She walks and walks and walks.

Night has fallen around her a few hours ago, her phone kept ringing and she only looked at it once, just to see who was calling, when she sees Lena’s name she rejects the call, and soon after she turns it off completely.

She discards the idea of going to the police station, deciding to just wander around for a while, the burning in her eyes went away a few minutes after she left the house, and her feet hadn’t left the ground just yet, Sam managing to control it for now.

She feels like shit, her interaction with Andrea replaying over and over in her mind. In her urge to get rid of her she hurt her beyond measure. Sam never judged what Lena and Andrea did, it seemed to work for them. In the beginning, when she had just met them, she felt like an intruder between the two, but considering the type of relationship they had, Sam quickly realized that this was how they were with each other. 

It was their business, but she doesn’t know what’s changed. Why it bothers her now. 

She is deep in her thoughts when she hears it. A loud explosion that reverberates inside her head, she turns around, trying to find it’s source. 

She sees a cloud of smoke forming about five blocks down. She hears people leaving their beds, grabbing their phones and calling 911. There are screams and cries for help, and Sam is moving before she realizes.

She runs faster than she’s ever done before, her feet leaving the ground once or twice only to fall down again and leave new cracks in the pavement. She doesn’t even think about it, and keeps running. 

Suddenly, she feels her body completely surge forward, and within the blink of an eye she is standing in front of the burning building, her shoes leaving skid marks on the sidewalk. 

Holy shit she thinks, realizing that she moves fast...faster than it should be humanly possible.

She looks up, and sees people starting to come out of the building, some of them holding each other, carrying children, or helping the elderly with the steps. The sirens are still too far away, and Sam can still hear people trapped inside. 

Her feet are rooted on the spot seeing the smoke and the roaring flames, the screams get overwhelming inside her head, the anguish palpable all around her. 

She starts taking a step towards the building when she sees it, a flash of red out of the corner of her eye, it crashes through a window and one by one people start appearing on the sidewalk, bewildered and shriveled, but without any harm.

Sam can hear the person doing the work, her ears focusing on them, their breathing is steady, their voice muffled trying to calm down the people they are rescuing, moving furniture and extinguishing fires.

Sam tracks them, there are only a few people left and she begins walking towards the alley next to the building, her eyes never leaving the windows. 

A few seconds more pass and everything goes quiet. The firemen finally arrive and start attending to the injured, a few of them going inside the building to check if the fire is under control. 

A few beats pass, and Sam thinks she has lost track of the hero until she sees them land in front of her. Their back is covered by a red cape that also goes to her head and forms a hood. 

“Leave,” they say, and Sam can hear the way their muscles tighten to leap off again. Without thinking about it, she moves forward, her new found speed putting her in front of the hero. Her hand resting on their shoulder.

“I need your help,” she says, her eyes searching the face under the shadow. She sees a flash of yellow hair when the hero jumps back a few feet, the hood falling.

Their hair is in a ponytail, a mask covering half their face. The only thing visible is their hair and their eyes, which shine bright blue. Sam can’t see their body, the red fabric covering most of it. 

“Please. I don’t know what’s happening to me,” Sam continues, deciding not to move forward, raising her hands in surrender. “Something awakened in me a few months back, but it’s only gotten worse this week”

“That’s not my problem,” the hero says, and Sam sees them take another step back. She hurries forward, and the hero stops.

“I have people I care about,” She pleads, tears finally forming in her eyes, she thinks about her mother, the pain in her eyes. Of Andrea, the hurt and the hatred when Sam ignored her. She thinks of Lena, and how worried she must be, the calls only landing in her voice mail. 

She has struggled alone this past week, trying to get things under control, but she is failing spectacularly, and quickly running out of ideas. 

“Please,” she says when the silence extends and the hero remains unmoving. “I don’t want to hurt them.” 

Finally, the hero sighs, the chatter on the sidewalk getting louder. They look back at it and shake their head.

They walk up towards Sam and, taking a deep breath, they bring one of their hands towards their face and pull down the mask. 

Sam’s eyes widen.

“Kara?”

**Author's Note:**

> That's fun isn't it? Shit is going down.
> 
> If you have any questions you can find me on twitter @ MisandristDiana and on tumblr as biwitchofthewest
> 
> Much Love <3 Stay safe!


End file.
